Ikite iru Magoroku

...and writer-director Keisuke Kinoshita. The story follows two tracks that eventually converge. One storyline concerns a large field that was the site of a 16th century battle, and that has been left fallow due to a supposed curse on anyone who would till the soil. Many of the nearby villagers are becoming insistent that the landowners allow farming to commence to help the food supply for the war effort, but the superstitious are paralyzed by fear. The other storyline concerns the search by two soon-to-be-deployed soldiers for an authentic Magoroku katana, a sword of great age and quality.

I'm not familiar with Kinoshita's work. Depending on the source, this is listed as either his first or second feature. I know that he would go on to become one of the most popular directors in Japan over the next 20 years or so. I hope his films get better, because this one was a mess. The film's message is a slightly confused mix of honoring one's ancestors while also not being so beholden to them as to cause neurosis. There's a relatively large number of characters for such a short running time (just shy of 90 minutes), so several of them are underdeveloped, and their various little dramas do little to elicit viewer sympathy. The performances are largely perfunctory. I recognized a couple of them from other Shochiku films of the era, including Mitsuko Yoshikawa as a disapproving mother, and Takeshi Sakamoto as a put-upon servant. Top-billed Ken Uehara, who plays the film's patriotic center, isn't bad, if a bit of a cipher.

It's a comedy about a field on which a local curse is laid against anyone laying a hoe, two swords of the legendary swordsmith Magoroku, a young couple who want to get married, a doctor looking to buy a Magoroku to appease his father's spirit, and the household head who is dying of another curse.

It's the second known directorial effort by Keisuke Kinoshita, with no listed writer; since he had had writing credits for four years already, I suspect this is a case where he took his name off as writer, because it's a propaganda about how everyone should work hard for Japan, and it's solved by deus ex machina, which is an ending no one has taken seriously since Moliere used it in his comedies.

There are hints of Kinoshita's later issues with social pressure, the sort of issue that often resulted in savage comedies or tragedies like THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA. For the moment, he could not do any such thing. Kinoshita was still a fledgling director, and military censors were still laying a heavy hand on directors. He would direct two propaganda movies the following year, then take a year off, returning as a writer-director of angry works for the following forty years.